It's An Ill Wind In Colebrook

Zoning Loophole Allows Preliminary Work For Wind Turbines Without Local Debate

Battle Over Test Towers

May 25, 2009|By RINKER BUCK, rbuck@courant.com

COLEBROOK — Renewable energy is now an American mantra, but homeowner Stephen King has learned that a legal limbo awaits anyone who wakes up to discover that a wind farm might be going up next door.

Because of a loophole that allows zoning boards to approve test towers for wind turbines without notifying neighbors, residents near terrain favorable for wind energy could face the prospect of a major wind energy project being built in their community with limited ability to challenge it.

What's more, the state, through its clean energy grants and its final permitting authority - the Connecticut Siting Council - inadvertently supports the bypassing of local zoning during a wind energy development.

That is the issue being tested as Connecticut's first potential site for a wind farm has entered its research phase on the western fringes of the Hartford suburbs.

Last fall, two politically connected wind-energy entrepreneurs who run BNE Energy Inc. of Waterbury, cleared 2 acres along Route 44 in Colebrook and put up a 180-foot meteorological tower to test the feasibility of developing a wind farm. The tower has anemometers and wind vanes to test the speed and direction of wind over eight months to a year, data that are required before the siting council can begin the approval process.

Even though the test tower could lead directly to a commercial enterprise - within a year or two, as many as five, 320-foot turbines with blades as long as 115 feet could be whirling over the site - and even though the proposed wind facility would be in a residential zone, the town of Colebrook issued permits for the project without a public hearing or notifying neighbors.

That decision - affirmed at a contentious zoning board of appeals hearing in Colebrook in February - is now being challenged by King and other neighbors in a case scheduled to reach Superior Court in Litchfield in August.

King, a network manager for a Torrington manufacturing company whose house and land borders the BNE site on Flagg Hill Road, first learned about the wind farm while making coffee in early December. Through the windows of his kitchen, King saw a Volvo excavator widening an access road in the woods south of his home.

When he called a neighbor about the excavator, King learned that about 2 acres on the 75-acre property owned by BNE had been cleared and that the town had approved a permit to install the research tower.

Two days later, when he met with Colebrook First Selectman Thomas McKeon and Karen Griswold Nelson, the zoning enforcement officer, King was told that a permit was issued for the tower because zoning regulations allowed such "temporary uses" in a residential zone, and thus no prior notice to neighbors was required.

The state legislation creating the siting council in 1972, revised in 1981, gave the state the authority to override local zoning because electrical generating facilities - from nuclear plants to trash-to-energy projects - are unpopular and invariably arouse local opposition. These powers now apply to any wind turbine facility that will generate more than 1 megawatt of electricity. BNE has said that it plans to build a 10-megawatt facility, which would probably mean between three and six wind turbines over 300 feet high apiece.

Colebrook had just set in motion a large and highly visible energy project that it would have virtually no control over if BNE decides to build on the site. BNE's exploration of the Colebrook site, and another in Prospect, was supported by $121,000 in low-cost loans from the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund, a state agency that provides seed money for renewable energy projects from surcharges paid by Connecticut electricity consumers.

POLITICAL PARTNERSHIP

BNE Energy is a partnership between Greg Zupkus, a former aeronautical engineer and telephone company executive, and Paul Corey, the former chairman of the Connecticut State Lottery. Corey was most recently in the news in 2005 for giving John Rowland, the former governor, a hot tub.

"I don't know anything about the local process or informing the neighbors beyond what the town told me to do," Zupkus said. "The first selectman and the zoning officer in Colebrook were very helpful and supportive from the get-go, and they never informed us that we had anything else to do."

King said he feels torn between two allegiances - the need for renewable energy and his rights as a homeowner.

"I am actually a very strong supporter of green initiatives, and I might agree in the end that a wind farm here makes sense," King said. "But, especially since state money is involved, I think that these 'green entrepreneurs' should follow local zoning laws.

"This is a huge decision for Colebrook. Five, 300-foot towers right over Route 44 is a massive commercial presence for a rural town. This should have been done out in the open, with everyone in town participating in the process and having their say."